10-JAN-2006
Babies make faces, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
This baby Thornicroft's Giraffe wandered over to our vehicle and told me exactly what it thought about having its picture taken. It is an image expressing, through incongruous humor, the lighter side of the safari experience. The young giraffe had the last laugh. I did not see the tongue sticking out until I had already made the image. And I did not appreciate the potential teaching power of this image until Monique Jansen made a point to me about the power of humor to trigger the human imagination. One can spend a good amount of time just thinking about what that little giraffe must be thinking.
11-JAN-2006
Lion on Chichele Road, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
It was still light enough to see the red gravel and earth road, which provides a striking backdrop for a golden male lion that stood motionless in front of our vehicle while searching for its pride. Zambia is one of the few countries where visitors can take night game drives, but only with licensed guides. As dusk falls, a spotter stands in the front seat with a powerful spotlight in hand, and this evening was off to an impressive start. These bright spotlights are very useful for night game viewing, but night photography of wild animals is usually very difficult because they are usually moving. In this case, the presence of dusky ambient light, in addition to the spotlight, my image stabilized lens, and the motionless stance of the lion, allowed me to make this image hand-held at a very slow ¼ of a second shutter speed.
02-JAN-2006
Spotted hyena, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Since it’s virtually impossible to photograph a moving animal at night -- even in a spotlight -- and get a sharp picture, I deliberately used blur to my advantage here. Such implied movement as this can be very expressive. This hyena was in a hurry as it ran in front of our vehicle, and its blurred form makes it seem all the more rushed. In this image, made at a third of a second, not only is the hyena moving, but so is the ground. That’s because I moved the camera in the same direction and speed as the hyena at the moment of exposure. In that way, I could actually define the hyena’s face and the spots, but the ground seems to be flowing under it, and its feet are all but invisible.
10-JAN-2006
Elephant dreams, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
An elephant family, caught in the glare of our spotlight, becomes a dream like image when the camera is using a one second exposure. Since the elephants were standing still, I deliberately moved the camera vertically at the moment of this one second exposure, hoping to expand the size of the huge tusks. The resulting slab like tusks, coming out of the mysterious darkness at right, become the focal point.
10-JAN-2006
Lioness at rest, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
A lioness, her eyes closed, was sitting deep in the forest. The beam of our spotlight caught her head -- she was so far away that the light fades as it strikes her, making this picture hauntingly abstract. This dim, soft image is quite different from most lion pictures. It underscores her exhaustion – we were drawn to the area by loud roaring that usually accompanies mating. We never did see her partner, but in this image we see her catching a bit of sleep before the next round of mating begins.
10-JAN-2006
Lion hunting on Chichele Hill, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
A nocturnal image of hunting lioness -- this one is just entering my frame, and the fading spotlight is barely illuminating her. All of which gives this photograph the nature of the hunt as I felt it -- mysterious, rushed, and distant. When a pride of lions is on the hunt at night, its members are spread out across considerable distances. Our spotter picked this lioness up in his beam as she was about fifty yards away, and as it drew closer to our vehicle, I began photographing her using the “multiple image” feature of my camera. I held my finger down on the shutter button and kept triggering the shutter several times a second. This image took 1/5th of a second. I must
31-DEC-2005
Nocturnal predator, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2005
We were heading back to Luangwa River Lodge, when our spotlight found several hunting lions walking along the side of the road. This lioness passed within a few yards of my camera. As she moved away from me, I made this softly impressionistic image of a predator on the hunt. I watched her fade into the night, as the bushes around her seem to tremble in the light. The very nature of night safari photography forces us to abstract our images in blur and darkness, eliminating most descriptive aspects of the subject and leaving room for the imagination to work on it.
02-JAN-2006
Remains of a zebra kill, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Several years ago, lions feasted on this zebra, leaving only its skin and bones on the green grass and brown mud of South Luangwa National Park. The carcass is still there, long after the hyenas and vultures have scraped the last shreds of meat from its bones. This was one of the few safari images I could leave my vehicle to make. I could move around to find a vantage point that brings some energy back into the carcass, making life out of death. The skin is in shreds, the rib cage is rising from the rear, yet one leg remains bent, as if in flight.
31-DEC-2005
Sparring impala, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2005
Male impala frequently spar by locking their horns in mock combat. But it's hard to know what is play and what is not. I watched this pair going at it with great intensity for fifteen minutes. It looked real enough to me. Because they moved behind the husk of a fallen tree, I could layer this image, sandwiching the battling impala between the gray tree in front of them, and the golden grass just beyond them. They seem to be fighting for territory, a space serving here as their own private corral between the old dead tree and the dead grass.
12-JAN-2006
Oblivious? South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Six grazing female impala pay no heed to this lumbering elephant that seems ready to crash their breakfast. In spite of appearances, impala and elephants seem to coexist peacefully here. Layers are work in this image as well. I tried to relate the grazing Impala in the foreground to the aggressive elephant behind them – only a line of brown grass separates them and the colors stand in sharp contrast as well. Behind the elephant, I’ve included a field of boulders, which, together with impala, provide vital contrast in scale.
08-JAN-2006
Tusker in the shadows, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
This huge bull was only a few feet away when I made this portrait. I saw the way the light fell on the tusk and on the green leaves before him, and regarded both as symbolic of the major challenges facing the African elephant -- poaching and sustenance. The full 420mm zoom allowed me to fill my frame with its head and extended ears. I used my spot meter to abstract the image, exposing for the leaves and that tiny splash of sunlight on the tip of the tusk, and allowing the elephant itself to nearly vanish into the shadows. Its eyes are fixed upon us, yet we feel their stare more easily than we can see them looking at us.
01-JAN-2006
Consumption and propagation, South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, 2006
Elephants pluck fruit from trees and then excrete the seeds as they walk the land. The seeds sprout in the fertile dung piles and create new trees. 90 different kinds of trees depend on elephants for propagation -- without these elephants, Africa would not be Africa. This image is built around three layers – a foreground of weeds, grass and bush provide a screen, behind which the elephant, as the second layer, can work in peace. The background layer